1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of human factors engineering. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for evaluating the complexity of a human-in-the-loop process.
2. Related Art
One of the goals of computer system design is to maximize the effectiveness of the relationship between humans and computers. Hence, computer system designers spend a considerable amount of time designing systems with efficient operational and service interfaces for humans. For example, a designer may decide to decrease the number of steps required to swap out a failed disk drive in a server to make the server easier for technicians to service. Designers typically make this type of design decision based on rough estimates of the complexity of a given transaction or process involving a human and a computer system.
As computer systems continue to become more complicated, accurately estimating the complexity of processes involving humans and computer systems becomes increasingly more difficult. For processes that do not involve a human being, determining the complexity of a process can be straightforward. For example, conventional approaches have used structural, informational, or descriptive complexity formulae and have introduced various measures to determine the complexity of the specific processes. Unfortunately, these conventional approaches do not consider a human as part of the system during the evaluation process. Consequently, these conventional approaches cannot be used to evaluate processes which involve a human in the loop.
Hence, what is needed is a method and an apparatus for measuring the complexity of processes involving a human in the loop.